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<title>The cost of lies by Mirilya</title>
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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/27395680">The cost of lies</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mirilya/pseuds/Mirilya'>Mirilya</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Chernobyl (TV 2019)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Drabble, Gen, I'd almost call it pre-slash but...</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-11-05</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-11-05</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-18 00:28:36</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>General Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>312</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/27395680</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mirilya/pseuds/Mirilya</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Ulana was not often surprised, but it had happened before.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>2</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>12</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>The cost of lies</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  <span>Ulana was not often surprised, but it had happened before. Much like the catastrophe she and the others had worked so hard to mitigate, the past eleven months of her life were defined by a single surprise followed by a series of outcomes that were unsurprising, if taken in observance of the circumstances that led to them. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Critically important documents censored beyond comprehension, certainly. The voice of a woman, of a scientist, ignored in the face of protecting the infallible image of the Soviet Union, obviously. Two strangers growing closer and becoming friends in a time of extreme stress, an outcome proven time and time again. She knew how the world worked, but this knowledge did not make the outcome any less tragic. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>Watching a politician and a scientist, so frequently at odds in the beginning. How quickly their motivations and reactions began to overlap became yet another small study for her to analyze at intervals. It got easier to study them as the number of survivors to be interviewed dwindled.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Though she joined the committee after they met for the first time, it was easy enough to extrapolate the difficulty of their first encounters. She watched a warmth grow between them. Never overt, and always in stages.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>She could feel the hollowness that yawned between them, then, as Valery got into the car, sparing them one last glance before disappearing. He may have been spared the bullet, for now, but the meaning was clear. It was the last time they'd see him. She chanced a glance at Boris as she turned to watch the movement of the car. He didn't move, his eyes fixed forward, blank as glass. Perhaps he was contemplating his own fate, or watching a scene play out in his mind, something for which any opportunity had long passed.</span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>
    <span>"Why worry about something that isn't going to happen?"</span>
  </em>
</p>
  </div></div>
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